The Long Game

Mental Models for Masons — Amara’s Law

Every Wednesday, a new framework for seeing what's already happening in your lodge, your workplace, and your life.

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Roy Amara, a Stanford researcher and futurist, observed that people tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. The pattern holds well beyond technology.

In 2010, Grand Lodges started launching social media campaigns. The expectation was rapid growth, new petitions, a younger demographic flooding in. It didn’t happen. The campaigns were quietly abandoned or scaled back, and the consensus became that social media doesn’t work for Masonry.

Fifteen years later, most of the brothers under forty who petitioned did so after encountering Masonry online. Not through an official Grand Lodge campaign. Through individual brothers posting about their experience. Through podcasts. Through quiet, persistent visibility that accumulated over a decade. The transformation happened. It just didn’t happen on the timeline anyone predicted.

Amara’s Law shows up in lodge planning constantly. A new Worshipful Master introduces an education program. Three months in, attendance hasn’t changed. He declares it a failure. Five years later, the three brothers who stuck with that program are the most engaged members in the lodge. The initiative worked. It just worked on a timeline the Master wasn’t patient enough to see.

The reverse is equally common. A lodge raises dues from $75 to $200 and braces for mass exodus. Nothing happens. A year later, still nothing. The conclusion: dues don’t matter. But ten years from now, the lodge that invested that revenue in meaningful programming will look completely different from the one that stayed at $75 and changed nothing else. The effect is real. It’s just not visible yet.

Most of what matters in a lodge operates on a longer timeline than the one-year term of a Worshipful Master. The brothers who understand this build things they won’t be around to take credit for. That kind of patience is rare. It’s also the only kind that actually changes anything.

-Brother Rob

Rob Linn is the author of several Masonic books. Find his work at amazon.com/author/robertwlinn.